Web Video / Down the Rabbit Hole

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Down the Rabbit Hole is a documentary series created and hosted by Fredrik Knudsen. A self-described series of "weird documentaries," it explores a wide variety of subject matters, mostly relating to strange phenomena, be it in real life or on the internet.

The style of the videos are overall fairly neutral and unbiased in their point of view, but otherwise remains informative; with Knudsen by and large sticking to stating the known facts about the subject matters he tackles and letting them speak for themselves.

The series can be found on Knudsen's channel here.

See also Midgar Syndrome (The Final Fantasy House), a fictionalized re-enactment of the events of The Final Fantasy House inspired by this show's episode on it.

Down the Rabbit Hole provides examples of:

• Arc Words: As is often pointed out by fans, the phrase "But this would not last" is said in many episodes.
• Author Appeal: Fredrik has admitted on several occasions that the topics he covers on the series tend to be personal hyperfixations of his.
  • In particular, the main reason Fredrik made the Hurdy Gurdy episode is because he owns and plays a hurdy gurdy.
• Body Horror:
  • Plague Doctors describes the horrific effects of the Black Death on its victims, up to and including showing an image of a hand afflicted with necrosis, with almost the entire hand covered in black, dead flesh.
  • In The Austrian Wine Poisoning, Fredrik notes that drinking too much of the contaminated wine led to necrosis in the liver, renal failure, vomiting, shivers, kidney stones, and even brain damage because of the diethylene glycol in the wine.
• Breather Episode:
  • The "Anime and Otaku" two-parter, which is a more optimistic story of Japan recovering from its postwar devastation and then entering its economic miracle and subsequent bubble era, and even once its bubble bursts the video doesn't go into much detail about the darker side of otakuism.
  • Finger Family Videos, a lighthearted piece exploring a series of strange meme videos on children's channels, is right between the fairly bleak and depressing Henry Darger, and the downright nightmarish Mouse Utopia Experiments.
  • Digital Homicide: Finale, which follows up the Mouse Utopia Experiment also qualifies, being both shorter lighter in tone.
  • Furries, while not without its darker content, is certainly a lot less disturbing than the nightmarish Final Fantasy House and depressing Noah Antwiler (Spoony) episodes that came before it.
  • Hurdy Gurdy, which comes off the heels of the somber TempleOS episode and before the drama-heavy WingsOfRedeption, focuses on the history of the titular instrument and the growing fanbase it has acquired over the years. Fredrik even shows off a hurdy gurdy of his own, allowing him to show off the instrument's features more easily.
  • Deep Blue, coming after the pretty disturbing Austrian Wine Poisoning and before the bleak, violent Battle of May Island, describes both the creation of the "Deep Blue" chess-playing computer and its matches against chess legend Garry Kasparov.
• The Comically Serious:
  • Fredrik tries to be as objective as possible no matter how ridiculous the facts he's reading out are, making for some unintentional comedy as he goes over bizarre events without a hint of comedic reaction.
  • Something that occurs very frequently is Fredrik reading text out loud exactly as it is written, including any spelling or grammatical errors, all while never breaking his deadpan delivery.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Despite the unbiased nature of his show, Fredrik is not above making occasional snarky comments or observations about the subjects he covers.
  • When he read quotes and online posts, he changes his tone to reflect the often angry or unstable attitudes of the original writer and regularly refrains from correcting typos, speaking the word as it was incorrectly written. When he finishes, he will immediately say "end quote" in his normal, flat tone of voice. Similarly, when talking about social media posts, he will occasionally spotlight comments he finds funny.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: A mild example, but the early Down the Rabbit Hole episodes tended to be somewhere between 10 to 20 minutes long, compared to the later ones which tend to be 30 minutes or longer. The Anime & Otaku episode was uploaded into two parts and is currently the only episode to be such.
  • Some of the earliest episodes have Fredrik very rarely working in some bits of his own humor, and sometimes show bias towards or against certain figures, such as the Romine brothers in his first video. This is very minor, but noticeable when compared to later episodes that put great effort into being strictly neutral and facts only.
  • Early episodes would occasionally use somewhat awkward "side notes" to cover details that are not directly related to the topic at hand, but are still helpful in understanding them. Later episodes work in such information more naturally.
• The Stinger: The Purr Cat Cafe episode ends with Fredrik repeating Diane's catchphrase "Meow. Meow. PURR!" after the credits are over.
• The Stoic: Despite the bizarre, occasionally humorous, and often disturbing content of the documentaries, Fredrik maintains an admirable, almost newscaster-like level of calm professionalism in his voice at all times. He has been compared to a non-comedic Cr1TiKaL for this reason.
• Vocal Evolution: Fredrik's voice is noticeably deeper in later episodes, most prominently from The Battle of May Island onward.